ARMS (TODD GOLDSTEIN FROM HARLEM SHAKES) PARTNERS WITH GIGANTIC MUSIC FOR US RELEASE OF KIDS AFLAME

Gigantic Music (The Walkmen, Harlem Shakes) is pleased to announce the long-awaited release of ARMS (Todd Goldstein, guitarist for Harlem Shakes)’ full-length debut, Kids Aflame, in the US! Previously only available on import through Melodic Records in the UK, the US version of Kids Aflame will feature with new bonus tracks and be released digitally through Gigantic Music on October 27th.

To people with a passing interest in such things, Todd Goldstein is the guitarist in the Brooklyn indie-pop band Harlem Shakes. To those who listen closely, though, Todd Goldstein is ARMS, a persona he’s been crafting since 2004. As ARMS, Goldstein takes up a decidedly slower, sweeter, sloppier endeavor, working alone and singing in a sad, idiosyncratic baritone. By most definitions of the well-worn term, Kids Aflame is a lo-fi album-Goldstein cobbled the record together over three years, holing up with a single microphone and a laptop in a series of rickety bedroom recording spaces. And yet, the songs speak to something grander than lo-fi’s usual emotional vocabulary, harnessing elements of shoegaze and classic country, Brian Eno’s instrumental weirdness and Stephin Merritt’s wry melancholy. Vintage reverb coats nearly everything; voices distort like an old Ricky Nelson LP; keyboards buzz and hum beneath brash, out-of-time drums; creaking doors and police sirens find their way into the mix. Kids Aflame’s songs explode out of their context, pushing at the format’s boundaries until light seeps from the cracks.

For all of the labels that could apply to ARMS, Goldstein’s mission is simple: to build music that keeps lonely listeners company and guides them safely through the night.

“You could dig through a whole month’s worth of fuzzy, home-recorded pop and not find a record as sweetly weird, as intelligently eccentric as this one. (Some of us have.) Kids Aflame is the good stuff, as loosely played as it is meticulously plotted.” –Dusted Magazine

“I’m always hesitant to make claims about the year’s best albums, but I just can’t help myself here. Kids Aflame is just as lovely, complex, jarring, rocking, and re-playable as we could have hoped…” –I Guess I’m Floating

Todd/ARMS will be performing with full band in Brooklyn, NY at Union Hall on Sunday, August 30th.

North American tour dates in support of Kids Aflame to be announced shortly.